The more I listen, the more I hear concerns about data ownership and control. Concerns, yes, but solutions, not much. All of it flavored by pessimism – as if the current abuse were here to stay.

Well I don’t think so.

Fist of all, I am sure, and I’ve said publicly in event like ITU Telecom World 2013, that today, a good privacy and data protection are like the icing on the cake, but that they may become the cake itself in the soon to come future. Indeed, I think that in 10 years from now, to create a real data economy where growth is possible, privacy will be part of the game, as much as letting users control the usage of their data.

Secondly, the logic, the technical paradigm to reach that goal is already public today. One of the greatest initiative to protect personal data, in my view, is the IDCUBED project from the MIT , headed by John Henry Clippinger. I had the pleasure to meet John at ITU Telecom World 2012, in Dubai, in a session on privacy. On that day, and in our lunch that followed, I discovered their idea of a “data mark up language” that would encapsulate all types of possible usages of the data produced.

In my view, based on that idea from the MIT, each data should have its own meta-mark up information, like the EXIFF files in a photo or the XML files in a web content.

It should answer the following question, from the biggest to the smallest:

1 / Do you allow your data to be share ? Yes. No. If no, end of the question.

2 / If yes, would you like this data to be share with

– scientific organizations that would use your data anonimmized for research purpose
– a specific person (please list as many, please use group or “circles” that you’ve already curated)
– all or part of yours contacts (from one or more database of personal contact, from address books to Facebook friends)
– commercial organization that may uses your data commercially (and possibly, pay you a share of the revenues)

The world of Qs, data gathering and life logging is still very, very, fragmented to say the least. This fragmentation is also one of the current issues that normal user have that stops them of tracking their behaviors and habits. Indeed, correlation and therefore knowledge, is only possible were multiple data sets are in the same system, and can be correlated and produce information.

In that sense, I had the pleasure to discover three current project at the QS EU conference last week end. Fluxtream (captions above), ZenoBase and Sympho.Me . Fluxtream seems the most advanced and the most “exhaustive one” but ZenoBase is also great, smartly done and seems to work very well. Sympho.Me is still in early stage with no much source of data that can be integrated into the account. I will test them a bit more extensively and provide you a more detailed feedbacks in the coming weeks.